


What You Know

by autoschediastic



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Boss/Employee Relationship, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Injury Recovery, M/M, Polyamory, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:53:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28920132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autoschediastic/pseuds/autoschediastic
Summary: Heidegger had his grunts posted in every city, town, and backwater village on the map, but Rufus only had four Turks to go around. Last he heard, a rumour had Tseng tromping through the jungle searching for a lost temple, Elena was recording Lifestream fairy tales told by the locals of a hot springs town, and Rude was making nice with the archeologists somewhere called Bone fuckin’ Village.Nostalgia wasn’t a feeling Reno had any real experience with, and he didn’t find anything noble or bittersweet about the ache in his chest.(Where Reno was and what (who) he was doing during major game events.)
Relationships: Reno/Rufus Shinra, Reno/Tseng
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	What You Know

* * *

Reno had never much liked the 70th floor. It was big and showy, which he didn’t mind, but it always stank of sour-sweet cigars and greed. 

Greed as a rule didn’t bother him. Not a hell of a lot did. Certain people, though, they tended to make his skin crawl. Running into old man Shinra left him feeling like it had crawled right off.

Rufus looked as much like his father as Reno looked like a nice guy. 

“Fuck me,” Reno said, lounging just inside the heavy wooden doors, “lookit you.”

There hadn’t been enough time for the office to really change. With Rufus sitting in that chair, though, crisp bright white against pricey dark leathers and richly hued wood, it felt different. A breath of fresh air, if Reno cared anything for the great wild outdoors. 

“What do you want, Reno,” Rufus said, focused on the fancy remodeling proposals spread out across the desk. The creator of whichever one he chose was going to shit a brick.

“Left this in the chopper.” A silver coin flashed between Reno’s fingers. “Figured I’d make like a good employee and bring it back.”

The metallic ting as Reno flipped the coin into the air brought Rufus’s head up. He caught it inches from his face to Reno’s appreciative whistle. 

“A New Age, huh, boss?”

Rufus regarded the coin for a moment before closing his hand into a fist around it. “Come here, Reno.”

Snake-hipped and sly, Reno sauntered on up to the desk, circled around it as Rufus pushed back his chair and nodded at the plush carpet. He stopped when the toes of his shoes bumped Rufus’s boots.

“My father caused this,” Rufus said, lifting a hand to indicate the bandages on Reno’s chest, the bruises on his face.

Reno winked. “All in a day’s work.”

The frown between Rufus’s brows deepened. He unbuckled Reno’s jacket, spread open the shirt beneath. His gloves were warm and a hell of a lot softer on bare skin than Reno’s own. 

“I should have Heidegger executed,” he said, rising. He tilted Reno’s head to the side with two fingers next to the welted bruise marring his jawline. 

“You’re makin’ me feel all warm ’n fuzzy inside, boss.”

Rufus glanced out the window at the smouldering void where Sector 7 should be. If he had for one moment thought he would inherit a desecrated city, he wouldn’t have been so conservative in his choices. 

“I hate to see my property needlessly abused.”

“Yeah,” Reno said, tongue flicking wet over his lips. “Yeah, I can see where that’d piss you right off. You just say the fuckin’ word.”

Genuine regret wasn’t something Rufus showed often. “Not while he has the most comprehensive understanding of our military capabilities. I’m declaring martial law tomorrow.”

Reno shrugged. Politics and the public had nothing to do with him. As much as he’d love to see Heidegger gone, maybe punch that ticket himself, he hadn’t really figured on it being in the cards. 

“Go home, Reno,” Rufus said, sinking back into his chair. “Rest. You’re off the active roster for the remainder of the week.”

Reno tiptoed around no one, censored his mouth for nobody, not even the VP turned overnight President. “Fuck that, I don’t need no time off. I told Tseng—”

“And now I’m telling you.”

“You mad at me or somethin’? ‘Cause I got fuckin’ banged up on the job?” He wouldn’t put it past Rufus to pull a stunt like that. “Won’t be the last time, you gonna bench me every time I stub a damn toe?”

Having dismissed him, Rufus’s attention remained on his work. 

Reno’s fingers tapped out his annoyance on his thigh. “Sure, okay. Fuckin’ fine.” He made a beeline for the door. “Fuck you.”

He’d track Tseng down for a couple choice words on employee satisfaction, that’s what the hell he’d do. A few bruised ribs and some scratches weren’t worth sidelining him right when shit was getting interesting. 

Sephiroth’s psychotic reemergence, Promised Land mumbo jumbo, and a slapdash mob of eco-terrorists led by a feisty little blond ex-SOLDIER? No way was he sitting this one out.

“Ah, Reno,” Tseng said, stepping off the elevator to raise an eyebrow at the impatient jabs Reno gave the call button. “I see you’ve been informed.”

“Informed, my ass. Don’t tell me you’re goin’ along with that shit?”

“I agree with that shit.”

Reno stared. He dropped back heavily against the wall with a grunt. “Fuck me.”

Tseng tilted his head, frowning slightly. “Reno, why is your—“

“The boss was feelin’ me up. You serious?”

Tseng gave a short hum, considering. “Be careful with him, Reno.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll spank me if I fuck up. Whatever.” Reno jammed his hands into his pockets, fingering the ridges on the coin he didn’t return. “This is bullshit and you know it.”

“The President requires the very best aid we can provide,” said Tseng calmly, “and to do that, you must take time to heal. Rude, Elena, and I will be in the field until further notice.”

“For fuck’s sake,” muttered Reno. “I dropped the damn thing, didn’t I? Got it done.”

“Why do you think this is punishment?”

“Ain’t it?”

The hard edges in Tseng’s dark eyes wavered briefly, and he sighed. 

“Aw, shit. Don’t give me that fuckin’ look.”

“Then don’t give me reason to.”

“You’re a real son of a bitch, boss.”

“Yes,” Tseng said, “I am.”

“The guy’s got a fuckin’ platoon of SOLDIERs to back him up,” Reno tried, one last ditch effort. 

“And they’ll accompany you whenever he steps foot out of this building. Are you really so determined to argue with me about this, Reno?”

Reno grumped and pretended he didn’t know what guilt felt like for a few minutes more. “You goin’ after the girl or the general?”

“Neither directly. We need more information. We’ve identified the so-called ex-SOLDIER as Cloud Strife, a Regular who went MIA during Sephiroth’s final mission.”

Reno straightened up slowly. “He sure as hell didn’t fight like no Regular. The eyes, man.”

Tseng nodded, grim.

Reno jiggled the coin in his pocket. There were a lot of things going on with Shinra he didn’t know about, not because they were classified or above his pay grade or he wasn’t able to dig up the dirt, but because he didn’t want to know. 

A SOLDIER who wasn’t? That had Hojo stamped all over it. 

Tseng saw the change in Reno’s mind. “Do as you’ve been told, Reno. Go home.”

“Guess I might as well. After you, boss.”

Tseng cocked an eyebrow but turned, striding off toward Rufus’s office. Reno watched his ass flex in slim-tailored slacks for the hell of it. Might end up his last chance for a while.

* * *

Three days later, sick of sleep and the same four walls, Reno perched happily in a sniper’s nest at the corner of Loveless Ave and Nakano. A few thousand people had turned out for Rufus’s big speech and several hundred of them weren’t appreciative of the strictly enforced attendee count. 

Rufus stood flanked by a SOLDIER team at a glass and steel podium, bright white in the morning light against the dark wreckage of Sector 7. Like most everybody else, Reno had figured this would be his inaugural address. 

Not once had he acknowledged the change in Shinra’s leadership. 

“That is Shinra’s promise,” Rufus said, bell-clear and sincere as the blue sky. “It’s my promise to you. Our teams will face many challenges in the coming months. I ask you, citizens of Midgar, to aid us in our efforts. I have approved over three dozen new positions in various departments and expect many more requests are finding their way to my desk at this very moment.”

He paused. “I may in fact have to approve a secondary aide for myself to handle them.”

The crowd laughed good-naturedly. Reno continued to scan faces and shadows for anyone not so jolly. 

By the time Rufus wrapped it up, even Reno had caught a touch of patriotic zeal. He skimmed down the fire escape with the disassembled rifle tucked away in the bag slung over his shoulder and left crowd control to the grunts. 

“Nice speech,” he said, sliding into the limo hot on Rufus’s heels. 

“Thank you.” Rufus dug a bottle of spring water from the mini fridge and drank deeply. “Were you actually listening?”

“Well, yeah.” It hadn’t occurred to Reno not to. “Probably wouldn’t’ve bothered if I was at HQ.”

The calculating edge in Rufus’s eyes remained. “You look better,” he said at length. 

Barely a hint of bruising remained. New skin showed darker in places, scars from augmented healing that would soon fade to nothing. Despite it, a familiar rage threatened. 

To soothe it, he thought instead of how Tseng had deliberately placed Reno at his side. The Turks were a true reflection of his city, and Reno most of all. There was ugliness in the safety he promised even as it was beautiful in its honesty, with a warmth like the mako haze that cradled Midgar.

“How well do I know you, Reno?”

“Hell.” Reno sat back with one foot propped bouncing on his knee, arms folded behind his head. “You don’t know shit.”

Rufus laughed in startled delight. “Only you would have the balls to say that to my face.” 

“Nah, Tseng’d say it. Nicer like, though.”

Several blocks passed in relative silence. Mako fluorescents replaced the hazy daylight as the car took the turn into the Corkscrew Tunnel. Reno, lulled by the rhythmic thump of tires passing over metal bracers, tilted his head to watch the lights flicker by. When his eyes slipped shut, he watched instead an afterimage in the negative shivering on the backs of his eyelids. 

“Tell me something I don’t know, Reno,” Rufus said.

“Loaded question,” Reno grunted. 

“Humour me.”

Reno hummed lazily. Without Tseng’s warning kicking around his head, he probably would’ve tossed off something pithy, maybe vaguely insulting, just to see what he could get away with. 

“You got this mouth,” Reno said, with his eyes still closed flirting at the edge of sleep, “looks like I wanna bite it.”

“Do you,” Rufus said blandly. 

“Yep.”

Cotton rustled and buckles clanked. Reno opened one eye to a slit as Rufus settled on the bench seat beside him, pinching the fingertips of his gloves and giving a slight tug one after the other to pull them off. 

His expression was a mixture of things Reno had seen before: Intent focus given to budgetary requests; soft intimacy as he watched Dark Nation’s first litter of pups clumsily play; covetous when he gazed out over his father’s city. Curiosity, anticipation, no small bit of pride. 

But Reno hadn’t ever seen all those things jammed into one look before. Never would’ve thought to imagine it aimed straight at him. And then he felt it in the touch of Rufus’s hand to his face, the pad of a thumb skimming over the ink beneath his eye, curving against his cheek. Fingers pushed into his hair.

Rufus kissed with more of the same. 

Reno stayed slumped right where he was and let the boss take him for a ride. He went easy when Rufus urged his chin high, and Rufus liked that a whole hell of a lot. Long after he figured Rufus would’ve had his fill they were still going. His lips were thick and hot, even a little tender by the time Rufus eased back.

“The fuck was that,” Reno said, breathing heavily with Rufus’s hand splayed at the base of his throat. 

“You didn’t bite,” Rufus countered. 

Looking up into eyes like slivers of an ocean glacier, Reno thought he might’ve gotten the wrong message from Tseng’s words of caution. 

“I’m a lazy fucker, boss,” Reno said, edging in close to see if another go was on the table. “But you knew that.”

* * *

Tseng returned the following week while Reno was hanging around outside Rufus’s office distracting his aide.

“Lips are sealed,” Reno promised, leaning in close over the desk. “C’mon, Stanislaw. Don’t hold out on me.”

“Hold out on him,” Tseng said. “For all our sakes, Mr. Bera, hold out on him.”

Reno sighed. “Boss is back,” he said to Stanislaw, who looked like nothing so much as a chocobo caught beak-first in a tub of gysahl greens. “Fun’s over.”

“With me, Reno,” Tseng said, and about-faced. “You have fifteen minutes to bring me up to speed.”

A few long strides brought Reno in line. “Ain’t gonna take that long. Fuck all happened.”

Tseng slowed. He veered off to the side and stopped by a potted ficus. “Nothing.”

“Yeah,” Reno drawled, “Nothin’.” His eyes narrowed. “You expectin’ different?”

“Obviously.” With this to chew on, Tseng folded his arms and leaned his butt against the wall, ankles crossed. 

“Somehow I get the feelin’ that ain’t complimentary to me.”

“Rufus is,” Tseng said, “volatile.”

“No shit.”

“You’ll forgive me if the very last thing I expected was to find you a stabilizing influence on him.”

Smug, Reno hooked a thumb in Tseng’s front pocket. “I think he’s got a crush on me. Makes him play nice.”

“And did you?”

“Said you only had fifteen. If you get me talkin’ dirty, I’m gonna need at least thirty.”

“Oh, at least,” Tseng said mildly. He glanced at his phone. “Check your go bag and give me two hours to deal with this.”

* * *

Hanging off the side of the bed, Reno rooted around the crumpled pile of his clothes for a smoke. He flopped back with sweet nicotine purring in his lungs, and offered Tseng a draw.

“Thank you, no,” Tseng said, smoothing the light sheet back into place after Reno scooted in close, his hair draped over Tseng’s arm and catching on sweat not yet dried. “The problem we face now is why they’re tracking Sephiroth. It’s unclear if Strife even believes in the Promised Land.”

“The big guy does.” Smoke trickled from the corner of Reno’s mouth. He skimmed a hand down Tseng’s stomach to cup his soft cock, fingertips tucked under his balls. Already it thickened a little against his palm. 

They’ve been in bed all of fifteen minutes, had barely even gotten started when Tseng had hissed a curse and jizzed all over Reno’s hand. It was just that sort of thing that filled Reno’s gut with smug heat and made him eager to get going again.

Floors thirty-two to thirty-five of the Shinra Building were dedicated to housing. Capsule apartments for employees took up the majority, some permanent, others for occasional overnights. Suites like this were available for a small cleaning fee and generally reserved for guests. All Reno really needed to enjoy a roll was a flat surface, but Tseng liked to mix business and pleasure, and like hell Reno would complain if the boss wanted to linger. He might even get a nap out of the deal. 

Tseng simply lifted his knee to indulge Reno’s tendency toward aimless groping. “But does Sephiroth believe as the Cetra that it’s a place of rest? If the General seeks eternal peace, I’m of a mind to let him have it.”

“Can’t believe he’s still kickin’. Where the fuck’s he been for five goddamn years?”

Tseng shook his head. “I’m more concerned by the timing of his return.”

Ash scattered to the bed as Reno rolled up onto an elbow to look Tseng square in the face. “You think it’s got something to do with the girl.”

“To show his face less than thirty-six hours after she steps into this building for the first time in fifteen years? It can’t be coincidence.”

“The way Senior ended up skewered, I almost figured Rufus, y’know?” Reno licked his thumb and forefinger and pinched out his smoke, tossing what remained onto the bedside table for later. “Mutual daddy issues.”

The reports all said Sephiroth had lost it before he vanished. If anyone could talk fast enough to point the loose canon he’d become at a target, it would be Rufus. 

“Some unresolved tension surrounding their respective mothers as well, I would imagine,” Tseng said. “But no. The former president refused Rufus’s calls after the plate dropped.”

Which explained why they had picked Rufus up on a deserted stretch of blacktop halfway to Midgar the night his daddy died. 

“You find out anything else on Strife?” Reno asked. “Mako-eyed fucker gives me the creeps.”

“Nothing to explain why a man deemed unsuitable for even preliminary SOLDIER testing has all the capabilities of a full graduate.”

Sorry he asked, Reno said, “Okay, enough of that shit,” and flung the bedclothes aside. He rolled up to his knees and plunked his ass firmly in Tseng’s lap. “You’re lookin’ too calm and collected here, bossman. I got a reputation to consider.”

Tseng set his hands to the narrow slope of Reno’s hips, thumbs curved inward over deep cuts of lean muscle. Reno was sharp-edged insolence packed into a wiry frame, objectively lovely to look at and difficult to ignore for a host of reasons dependent on his mood. His mouth—frequently saucy, deliberately careless—was lush and ungentle against the half-formed bruise sucked into the delicate skin at the curve of Tseng’s armpit. 

Reno nuzzled his face against neatly trimmed hair and breathed a deep moan. “Why d’you gotta be so goddamn sexy?”

Still thinking of what made him foolish enough to have fallen into bed with Reno years ago and so many times since, Tseng said, “It’s in my nature, I suppose.”

Reno laughed and pushed his hard cock against Tseng’s stomach. “I just fuckin’ bet it is.”

* * *

In Junon, Rufus’s former and conditional seat of power, the new President was triumphant. In Costa del Sol, watching with Heidegger as Reno emerged from the slaughterhouse cargo hold and knocked crimson muck from his shoes, he was furious. 

“Explain yourself,” Rufus ordered, wanting nothing so much as to add the useless meat that was Heidegger’s brain to the gore shoveled overboard. 

Heidegger sputtered and blustered, and for the first time in his life looked thankful when Reno interrupted.

“Think I got the answer to that question right here, boss,” Reno said, presenting Rufus with a clear specimen container. His bloody fingerprints dotted the glass. 

Rufus shook out a handkerchief before accepting it. Inside writhed a mottled, severed hand the colour of fresh mould. One of its fingers was broken, cracked almost parallel to the others. It scratched frantically at the glass warmed by Rufus’s grip. 

Heidegger paled. The broken capillaries on his ruddy nose lit up like Midgar’s highways at midnight. 

“Leave,” said Rufus. He turned the container over in curious disgust. “This is Jenova.”

“Sure is.” Reno tucked bloodied hands into equally bloody pockets. He hadn’t exactly enjoyed crawling through the slop back there to find it wedged behind crates draped festively with intestines, but he’d picked up a certain amount of pragmatism from Tseng over the years. If he was going to get in a mess, then he might as well get in a fucking mess. “Makes your guts go cold, don’t it.” 

“And Sephiroth is aware he came from,” Rufus lifted the restless hand into cheerful sunlight, “...this?”

“Yeah, I don’t got the specifics of how that worked,” and neither did Reno want them, “but s’what the manor records said. What’s left of ‘em, anyway.”

“This makes no sense,” Rufus said quietly, and ignored Reno’s barking laugh. Whatever Jenova was, it was clearly of no relation to the self-identified Cetra Hojo had sought for his experiments. It behaved more like the bloodthirsty wildlife that plagued travelers and remote villages than anything human.

“I need you to stay on Strife. Find what his interest is in Sephiroth.”

“Yessir,” Reno said, and didn’t bother to mention Rufus asked for the impossible. Surveillance could only do so much. They needed an edge, and it just so happened that edge had turned in his walking papers hot on the heels of the blood-soaked shit that went down at HQ. Tseng had a bead on Hojo before he’d taken one step outside the building.

“Do something with this. And Reno?”

Reno tossed the container idly from hand to hand and hoped it made the thing inside it dizzy. Unless somebody ordered him otherwise, it was going up in flames along with what was left of his suit. “Yeah, boss?”

“You stink. Do something about that, too.”

* * *

Naked except for the smears of blood left behind from peeling off his clothes, Reno handed the bundle to the maid struggling to maintain her composure while struck dumb by scandalized horror. “I mean burn the whole fuckin’ thing,” he said. “Towels n’ all. That dress if any of this shit gets on it. Shinra’ll pick up the tab.”

“O-okay. Do you, uh.” She shifted her grip at the smell, holding the edges of the towels securely shut. “Is there anything else I can help you with, sir?”

“Atta girl. Send up something bubbly and expensive, would ya? With like, I dunno. Thirty percent tip? Forty? Whatever. Just stick a nice chunk of change in your pocket.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, having already decided on thirty-five in concession to the price of the bottle she was going to pick, and because, while the view was nice and she had been confronted by men who answered the door naked with much sleazier intentions, she was tired of unsolicited full frontals. 

Satisfied, Reno padded across the suite passed the palm screens open wide to the beachy breeze and climbed into the scalding hot shower. His place in Sector 1 was nothing to sneeze at, but nobody in Midgar got water pressure this sweet for longer than five minutes. He let the water pound the gore out of his hair and sniffed at the array of rough-edged artisan soaps on offer. 

A good twenty minutes later, smelling of cinnamon and cedar, Reno wandered out of the bathroom finger-combing his hair. Rufus sat on the low settee near the window, sipping on Reno’s champagne as the sun sank lazily on the horizon.

“Coulda waited for me.”

“When I told you to clean up,” Rufus said, lifting an eyebrow at the towel slung low on Reno’s hips, “I don’t believe I invited you to use my suite to do it.”

“Can’t get in your pants with a wall between us, boss. Place is too classy for glory holes.”

“And your excuse for spending my money?”

“I ain’t cheap.”

Rufus turned from the tropical vista, recrossing his legs as he settled back with a view of the room and the large bed at its centre. “Go on, then. Seduce me.”

Reno slicked back his hair as if he hadn’t heard, shining trails of wet left on his shoulders as he looped it in a knot at the base of his neck. He gave Rufus his back while he poured his own champagne, filling it to the brim because he wasn’t cheap but he wasn’t some high society asshole who thought a glass of booze needed to be half empty to taste any good either. The price tag didn’t matter as long as the bubbles were crisp when they burst on his tongue. 

He let the towel fall loose to the floor in his hand while he drank. The thin line of water dripping from his hair down his back tickled as it slowed near the curve of his ass, got stuck there on dry skin until another droplet made its way down to push it over the rise and let gravity take over. He shivered and smeared it to nothing across his ass cheek. 

“I’d hardly thought you’d be this quiet,” Rufus commented. 

“Been a long day, boss,” Reno said, draping the towel over the gentleman’s valet beside the closet. His usual alley cat saunter took on a different light in nothing but skin, his cock hanging heavily against his thigh and thick with promise. He put one knee on the cushions, then the other, taking his time settling into Rufus’s lap with arms draped around his neck, not bothered in the least by Rufus’s legs still crossed or the mild indifference on his face. 

Reno wasn’t the only one putting on a show. He just decided to be more honest about it. Veracity wasn’t a quality in high demand for a spook, but he felt a little authenticity went a long way. Nobody he bumped into in the dark corners of Midgar would believe he was only passing through, so on the whole Reno didn’t even bother to lie. 

“Wanna make out and feel me up some more?”

A reluctant smile tugged at Rufus’s mouth. “Is that all?”

“Baby,” Reno said, feathering his fingers through Rufus’s soft hair before gripping tight, “you just let me know if I’m goin’ too fast.”

* * *

Reno snapped awake when the moon was high and dancing between the clouds on the rising wind. He eeled out from under Rufus’s outflung arm and dropped silently to the bedside on one knee, a matte black gun in hand with a round already chambered. 

The Presidential Suite opened out onto a private beach unreachable without the right equipment and a fanatic’s dedication. He clocked the shadow on the sand as Tseng’s and muttered a curse.

“Coulda blown you away,” he said quietly, walking to the room’s edge. 

“You wouldn’t have, in much the same way as you didn’t wake when I entered.”

“If that’s a dig, fuck you. Ain’t nobody gonna get close enough to even see the damn door without wakin’ me up with the number of guards donkey breath’s got posted.” He scratched at his stomach. “Lemme grab some shorts. Sand in the crack is nasty.”

Tseng, his jacket and tie left elsewhere and shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, took a seat beneath the pavilion. The screens rattled softly as Reno closed up the suite. He set the two tumblers on the table and poured a few fingers of golden whiskey into Tseng’s, a few extra into his own. 

“You see the thing?” he asked. 

Tseng nodded and picked up his drink, his bare hands elegant and washed pale by the moonlight. Somebody not Reno might think it a shame what those hands got up to, as lovely as they were. 

“The professor was surprisingly compliant,” Tseng said. “He takes quite a bit of pride in his accomplishment.”

“He make any sense about what the hell that is?”

“Too much.”

“Shit.”

Another nod from Tseng and they drank in tandem, Reno curling his toes into the cool sand and Tseng with his eyes closed, weary. The gentle sound of the waves against the shore were at odds with the stiff line of his shoulders. 

“Rufus is gonna be pissed as fuck, ain’t he,” said Reno.

“Hojo is certain Sephiroth and the Jenova remains share a bond. Whether Sephiroth believes himself to be a Cetra descendant, as the team who first located Jenova wrongly thought it to be, or something else entirely is unclear.” 

Tseng gathered his hair in one hand and lifted it away from the back of his neck, the night air a cool prickling relief as sweat dried. His uneasy stomach would benefit from something not as harsh as whiskey, he was sure, but he had neither the patience nor the inclination to indulge in bodily weakness with his mind full of Hojo’s insanity. 

“What’s it matter?” Reno asked. 

“In the end, most likely not much at all. Jenova is an interstellar parasite. Its sole purpose appears to be the destruction of all life and ultimately the planet itself, at which point it will move on to repeat the cycle.”

Breath hissed sharply through Reno’s teeth. “And he put that shit in a goddamn person?”

“Several persons, it would seem.” Tseng turned his gaze away from the moon, no longer finding it a useful touchstone in centering himself. “Jenova can be dismembered, broken down to a cellular level and scattered across the globe, and it will survive. The best we could hope would be to render it dormant again. It can’t be killed.”

“Says who?”

Tseng laughed softly, taking an odd comfort in Reno’s predictable belligerence. “The Cetra, apparently. As long as a single piece of it lives, it may as well be whole.”

“So we find all the pieces,” Reno said, his teeth bared fiercely in the moonlight, “and we burn ‘em.”

* * *

In a nowhere town at the ass end of nothing, Reno sat on a lumpy mattress with his back to the wall trying to wash the taste of dirt from his mouth with lukewarm brew. The whole place ran on coal, the air thick with it, and second-rate mako batteries. A dusty room in the bartender’s attic was his reward for listening to some old coot justify the use of the latter because waste not, want not, and there was no way to stuff the mako back into the planet anyhow.

He was still creeped out by the idea that mako was the planet’s blood. That the thing he walked on was alive, with a consciousness, and maybe it had an opinion of him that wasn’t too charitable. 

He had bled plenty over the years. It didn’t take a hell of a lot to make more—a thick burger, a few drinks, and he was golden. What made everybody so damn sure mako was a finite resource? 

“Aw, hell,” he muttered, tipping his head back to stare up at the raw timber ceiling. Solo assignments were no damn good for him.

Heidegger had his grunts posted in every city, town, and backwater village on the map, but Rufus only had four Turks to go around. Last he heard, a rumour had Tseng tromping through the jungle searching for a lost temple, Elena was recording Lifestream fairy tales told by the locals of a hot springs town, and Rude was making nice with the archeologists somewhere called Bone fuckin’ Village.

Nostalgia wasn’t a feeling Reno had any real experience with, and he didn’t find anything noble or bittersweet about the ache in his chest.

* * *

Tseng moved a lot in his sleep. 

Maybe it was making up for how still and silent he spent his days. Maybe it meant about as much as his preference for al dente noodles, or maybe it didn’t mean anything at all. 

Maybe it was time Reno got his city boy ass the hell back to Midgar where it belonged. He kicked at the scattered remains of a campfire and the dirt churned up around it and didn’t think about being thankful it meant Tseng had been alive and well enough to light one.

“Fuckin’ bugs full a’ bug-out juice and lizards bigger ‘n you,” he said. “The hell kinda world we live in?”

“Makes you wonder,” Rude said, down on his knees studying the edges of the small hollow for a hint of where Tseng might’ve gone. The thinning blood trail was a good thing, even if it made him harder to track. 

“Over here,” Elena called. “I think he went up.”

“Up?” said Reno.

Rude stood and brushed moss of his knees. “Fewer predators.”

“How the hell am I supposed to know that shit?” Reno dragged a hand through his sweaty hair. “Fuck, give me a mob to shakedown, hop ‘em up on diamond dust first, I don’t fucking care. Anything but this.”

Elena and Rude put their heads together over a smear of dirt and a pulped leaf, decided it was Tseng, and she said, “People say it wasn’t always this way,” as they started up the jagged slope. Water burbled up in places from an underground spring, turning the rocks slippery with lichen. “People used to travel all the time. Nobody worried about infestations, or things like a bagnadrana drove leveling the whole town.”

“Yeah?” Reno wedged the toe of his boot in a rock cleft, checked the stability, then climbed hand over hand on top of a boulder. He scooted over flat on his belly and stuck an arm out to help the other two up. “They tell you Shiva used to throw tea parties for moogles, too?”

“Is it seriously that hard to believe the world used to be different?” Elena asked, hands balled into fists on her hips. “There’s an alien parasite on the loose and we’re chasing after a dead man, for god’s sake.”

“He ain’t dead!”

Elena’s foot came down wrong. She stumbled, caught herself before Rude could.

Calm and cool in the midday heat, Rude said, “For a ghost, Sephiroth gets around.”

“Tch,” Reno huffed.

As evening closed in and the jungle began to grow restless, Elena found drag marks leading to an uprooted tree caught on the branches of its more stable fellows. Hidden beneath its twisted roots was Tseng.

“Finally,” he rasped. “I’ve been listening to you for hours.”

He lay belly up on the dusty ground, his torn and bloody shirt held shut with strips of his jacket tied together. His feet were bare, filthy. In one hand, caked with dried mud, was a Shinra-branded canteen. His gun was in the other. 

“Son of a bitch,” Reno said, dropping to his knees to carefully lift Tseng’s head into his lap. He snapped his fingers frantically at Elena until she unscrewed the cap of her own canteen and handed it over for him to hold to Tseng’s cracked lips. “Easy, boss. Easy. We got you.”

Tseng, the skin around his eyes thin and bruised, stared up at Reno as he carefully sipped. 

Rude knelt on his other side, already working on the messy wound that had ripped him open from chest bone to belly button. The edges were closed and crusty, the skin beneath as Rude gently cleaned it for a better look the telltale shiny white of augmented healing. Elena hunkered down and took over sorting through the med kit, handing Rude items as he asked for them.

“It wasn’t Sephiroth,” Tseng said, his voice stronger, still rough.

“Fill us in later, yeah?” Reno said, fussily combing matted hair back from Tseng’s face. “Elena, radio—”

“On their way out of Fort Condor,” she said. “ETA three hours.”

“Hear that? Couple more hours and we’re outta here.”

“He’s pretty messed up inside,” Rude said, pointing out the dark flesh on Tseng’s side Reno had taken for the mother of all bruises. 

“Tell me you don’t gotta open him up here.”

Rude scrubbed at the stubble darkening his jaw. His restore materia was one of the highest grades he’d ever seen, much more refined than the one Tseng habitually carried. A self-applied cure was almost always less effective, and especially so if someone was as banged up as Tseng must’ve been when he cast it. 

“Give him something to bite on,” Rude said. 

Reno skinned off his jacket and turned it inside out, folding it over a few times and wedging the cleanest patch he could find between Tseng’s teeth. Elena, the gun already eased from Tseng’s grip, held his hand. 

The warm green glow that built on Tseng’s skin didn’t match his pained grunt. His nostrils flared as he struggled to control his breathing and the light began to pulse softly, darkening as it sunk into flesh then building bright again, gathering strength, pushing inside. Tears carved a path through the dirt on Tseng’s face to mix with the sweat dampening his temples. 

“Go ahead, boss,” Reno said, easily hiding the churn of his guts with a grin. “Pass out already. We ain’t goin’ nowhere without you.”

Tseng opened his eyes slowly, one after the other. They were losing daylight fast now, the deepening shadows and unshed tears turning his eyes to an even darker liquid brown. He worked his mouth free from cloth wet from his spit. 

“Send troops north,” he grit out. “The crater.”

Elena’s radio crackled and Reno said, “On it,” and between one laboured breath and the next, Tseng went limp. Reno kept his fingers curled close to Tseng’s mouth, reassured by the shallow but steady push of warm air. 

After the green glow faded and Rude sat back, his mouth tight with strain, and after Elena had cut the sergeant’s pointless questions short with the order to relay the information to the president immediately or face an immediate and forceful retirement, Reno dragged his gaze up. 

“What fuckin’ crater?”

* * *

Reno shifted from foot to foot, the air turning to icicles in his throat no matter how deeply he hunched into his musty survival gear. He hadn’t had reason to use it since the day it was issued so it sat crammed into the bottom of a trunk in the Turks’ storage room, forgotten. Maybe he should’ve checked for an expiration date.

“Shoulda stayed in the fuckin’ city,” he said, shoved in close to use Rufus as a buffer against the sharp swirling winds. “S’what I shoulda fuckin’ done.”

Untouched by the cold except for a slight reddening of his cheeks, Rufus looked down at him critically. “As Tseng’s second, I don’t see how you’d think that possible.”

“Fuckin’ meant you, asshole.”

Rufus lifted his brows but refrained from commenting. Reno’s mood had steadily soured as the temperature dropped, and he wasn’t subtle about checking his phone for updates on Tseng’s condition. 

There was no need to worry. Tseng had been in and out of consciousness immediately after his transfer to Midgar, his attempts to tell them of Sephiroth’s intentions rambling and at times nonsensical, but that had been days ago. He was recovering well now despite his irritation at being strictly confined to bed. 

The airship, anchored several miles back from Icicle Inn, rocked fitfully as the crew unloaded ground transpo. The plan was to overnight in town and tackle the glacier fresh in the morning; the dark clouds bearing down from the northeast brought on a hasty re-evaluation and landed them instead in a cluster of holiday cabins about three kilometres too far from civilization for Reno’s comfort. 

The blizzard came tumbling down the mountains right into the backs of the unlucky bastards at the tail end of the convoy. Six inches of snow slammed down in the first hour and brought on total darkness hours ahead of sunset. The Regulars doubled up on patrol, switching off on snow removal to keep the pathways clear as the last of the supplies were laid in. 

The old coot at the ranger station had smiled wide enough to show off a cracked molar and said it would be two days, maybe three before the weather cleared, but not to worry, the glacier wasn’t going anywhere fast. 

Reno grinned back and held off on breaking the rest of his teeth, barely.

His good deed was rewarded with a double-hearth fireplace merrily crackling away in the single-room cabin. It pumped out enough heat he stripped down to his shorts and shirtsleeves to get started on turning ration packs into something edible. 

Sunk into the massive cushions of an obviously hastily reupholstered couch, Rufus sipped at the cognac he had brought in from the village. Outside, the snow turned mean, pelting at the windows.

“Gonna be nasty out there tomorrow,” Reno said, rummaging through the small box of supplies that had come with the cognac. Rehydrated tofu chunks swimming around in anemic sauce needed more than a measly pinch of dried red pepper flakes to redeem it. 

Rufus watched the ice build up on the glass. The patrol that trudged by beyond it wavered as if they were underwater. 

Reno brought the food over in mismatched bowls balanced in the crook of his arm, two open beers caught by the neck in one hand. “Put that fancy shit away. Ain’t gonna taste as good without a nice cheap brew.”

While Rufus doubted it would make much difference, he put aside his drink and accepted a bottle. Small chunks of ice clung to the sides of it from where Reno had stuffed it into a snowbank to cool it faster than the small refrigerator would’ve managed. 

As Reno sat down sideways on the couch, legs folded beneath him with a pillow balanced on his lap to prop his supper on, Rufus looked curiously at the strangely appealing, deeply fragrant red curry. 

“I don’t believe anyone has ever cooked like this for me,” he said.

“Shit, hot, hot,” Reno hissed, sucking in air and chewing with his mouth open, shoving food around with his tongue. “Shoulda let it sit some, fuck.” He took a big gulp of beer and held it in his mouth, soothing the burn. “I wouldn’t call it cookin’.”

“No?”

“Hell nah. We get back to Midgar without my goddamn balls freezin’ off, I’ll show you what some real cookin’ looks like.”

“I hesitate to ask what one has to do with the other.”

Reno tapped his temple with the butt of his fork. “Smart.”

Rufus’s gaze travelled again from the window to the fire, from the fire to the bed heaped with thick handmade quilts. It was a cozy and comfortable setup, certainly, and oddly dreamlike cocooned in the icy snow with nothing but the howling wind and crackling fire for company. In many ways, and despite the grating delays, he found it much more relaxing than the sunswept beaches of the south.

“You haven’t checked your phone in some time,” he pointed out.

“Yeah.” Reno scratched at the hair curling softly against the back of his neck, fluffy from drying naturally in the heat as he worked. “He told me to fuck off and take care of you like I’m supposed to.”

Rufus paused with the fork halfway to his mouth. “Is that what this is?”

“Sure.” Reno tipped his head back for a long pull on his beer, eyeing Rufus from beneath half-closed lids. “You got some sorta point you’re workin’ up to? ‘Cause after I’m done here, I got plans for me n’ you n’ that big bed over there.”

Reno’s lack of anything resembling tact was another strange source of comfort. He supposed he did have a point, if he could find the words to give it voice. 

So far from Midgar and all he’d ever known, his understanding of their very planet shaken to the core, he expected to feel at least marginally lost. His place in the world, once so certain, had been thrown into chaos by forces he at times still struggled to believe were real. 

Most surprising of all, Reno’s almost negligent acceptance of their new reality while he continued to flounder didn’t grate on nerves already scraped raw. Like the storm raging outside, it only served to emphasize the solace of their isolated little bubble. 

“Lemme give ya a hand,” Reno said, setting aside their half-finished meal, “and you tell me if I got it or not.” He swung smoothly around to drop his feet onto the couch arm, his head into Rufus’s lap. He wriggled around until he was settled comfortably, then snagged Rufus’s beer for a quick swig.

“You gotta wonder what the fuck this is,” he said, tucking an arm behind his head. He toyed idly with the buttons of Rufus’s shirt. “You brought it up with Tseng way back when, ‘cause you respect the hell outta that man and you weren’t gonna stick your dick in his business without knowin’ the score. Respect’s mutual, so he straightened you out real quick.”

Reno tilted his head back. “How am I doin’ so far?”

“Continue,” said Rufus. 

“So you got that figured out.” Reno crossed one ankle over the other, drowsy in the heat with the subtle scent of Rufus’s favourite cologne mixing with woodsmoke and spice. “Casual fucks all ‘round. ‘Cept this thing we’re doing, it ain’t one bit casual at all. How the hell could it be? We got some serious til death do us part shit goin’ on, and that’s just our fuckin’ day jobs. Me n’ him, we’ll take a bullet to the brain no second thoughts, and if we gotta choose me or you, you or him, it’s gonna be you.”

Rufus wet his dry throat with a mouthful of beer and found it impossibly hard to swallow. Reno’s words were like the snow piling up all around them, coldly inevitable and threatening to bury him alive. He hadn’t known how to ask the question, he realized, because he never truly wanted the answer. But again like the storm, for all his money and power, he was helpless to stop it. 

“Here’s the thing, boss. It looks like a moogle, smells like a moogle, it even cusses like a moogle, then you know what? It’s a motherfuckin’ moogle. You can call it a carbuncle all you want, that don’t give it four legs and a fluffy tail. 

“So now what? You got this thing you ain’t never asked for, ain’t too sure you want, but the thought of losin’ it is a knife in your guts. And it’s guaranteed one day you’re gonna lose it. Not ‘cause of anythin’ you did, or somethin’ you didn’t do. Life don’t play it that easy. But here’s the real kicker, you ready for this?”

“I believe so,” Rufus lied.

Reno closed his eyes and smiled beatifically. “It don’t matter one fuckin’ bit.”

Rufus laughed in startled disbelief. A tiny crack wormed its way through the chunk of ice lodged in his stomach. “That seems a bit much to simply discount.” 

“Nope.”

“No?”

“S’what I said.”

“Your impressive logic has lost me.”

“Somebody loves you, boss, the real deal, genuine article, all in and let it ride, there ain’t a goddamn thing you can do to change it. You got two choices, and the only difference between ‘em is when somebody’s gonna cry.”

They were snowed in for two nights and one full day. The static-ridden video call they managed to get through to Tseng lasted all of seven minutes. The food was adequate, the alcohol less plentiful than Rufus would have preferred, and the lost time chafed. He spent more time out of his clothes than in them, less out of bed than in it. The sex was stupendous, and the sleep the best he’d had in weeks. 

When they finally rolled out on the third day after their arrival, his eagerness to discover what secrets were hidden in the crater wasn’t enough to completely mask a pang of disappointment. 

“Fuckin’ snow,” Reno groused.

* * *

It wasn’t unusual for something to drag Reno out of bed on the wrong side of morning. Mostly it was a phone call, and mostly he didn’t mind since all it immediately required of him was a sharp grunt to confirm his orders were clear. 

Somebody banging on his door wasn’t exactly unusual, either, but it happened infrequently enough he felt a whole lot less charitable about stumbling through the dark of his living room with his jeans tangling his feet.

“I said I’m fuckin’ comin’!” He kicked shoes out of his way and slumped against the doorframe, peering squinty-eyed at the small screen he’d rigged up to the building’s security feeds. He scrubbed a hand over his face, quickly checked the stairwells as he came more awake, and finally opened the door. “Not that I ain’t happy to see you, man, but what the fuck?”

“I don’t have to ask if you’re hungry,” Tseng said, pushing a neatly tied sack of take-out into Reno’s arms. Once inside, he secured the locks, proving he could’ve let himself in. 

Reno’s jaw cracked on a yawn. “The boss know you’re outta bed?”

“Most likely. If not by now, he’s slipping.”

Shuffling the hot bag of food into the crook of his arm, Reno watched Tseng bend carefully to unlace his boots. His slacks were loose, sitting much lower on his hips than customary. The usual shirt, jacket, and tie were replaced by a thick cable-knit sweater too uniform to be handmade. 

The light slanting into the short hallway from the street outside was wan and washed too much colour from Tseng’s face. Sweat dampened his hairline from the trek up through Sector 0. Only because Tseng would bitch about the waste if Reno dropped it did he keep a tight hold on the take-out while he wormed his way beneath Tseng’s arm. 

“The hell’re you thinkin’,” Reno muttered, shouldering Tseng’s weight. He kicked those same shoes aside again and led the way to the sofa. “Lie back, you stupid shit, and breathe slower. You’re gonna hyperventilate.”

Tseng’s eyes went hard. “Excuse me?”

“Nope, don’t think I will.” Reno dumped the bag onto the coffee table and turned on a lamp. He shoved the food out of the way with his ass as he sat down and rudely stuffed Tseng’s sweater up under his armpits. Tseng’s skin was clammy against the backs of his fingers when he unzipped Tseng’s slacks, pushed them down.

The scar split Tseng’s belly from ribcage to hipbone. Its edges were gnarled and unhealthy looking, angry red beneath a yellowish crust. Chunks of dead black skin clung to thick stitching. In the places where it had fallen away, tender new skin was so thin as to be nearly transparent. 

It was the most hideous thing Reno had ever slapped eyes on. He was so grateful for it they burned. 

“Patch job looks worse’n yours was.” Reno swallowed the hot lump in his throat and coughed wetly. He leaned away and coughed harder to clear it. “Why ain’t it wrapped up?”

“It was. The tape came loose.”

Soaked off from the sweat drying cold on his skin, more like. Reno scrubbed his hands on his thighs and stood, hiking up his jeans to finally button them. “Gonna fix you up,” he said, heading for the kitchen. “And you’re gonna tell me what the hell you’re doin’.”

Tseng sighed, a dry rasp. “I need to know what happened, Reno. Rufus is being evasive. The few reports I’ve managed to access mention nothing of Sephiroth, or Jenova.”

A lack of information was just about the only thing that could knock even-keeled Tseng for a loop, so if Rufus meant for it to force him into inactivity, he made the wrong call. Reno brought in a medkit and pot scorched from use full of warm water, sat back down, and got to work. He finished his report long before he was done playing nurse, but as long as he kept talking, Tseng seemed content to let him fuss.

“Supernatural antibodies is the gist I got,” Reno said, skewering a room temperature spring roll from the cartons to shove into his mouth. The noodles he’d have to heat up later when he had both hands to spare. “Only question is what’re those things gonna do with Sephiroth sealed up tighter than Ifrit’s asshole. Not much of Jenova left for ‘em to go after, and that’s what Hojo says they were created for in the first place.”

“Hojo,” said Tseng like a curse. “It’s unfortunate his experiments never solved the problem of his existence for us. Is he correct?”

“Looks like.”

Tseng let loose with the curses from his childhood then, and Reno knew better than to interrupt once he got started. By the time Reno cleaned up and put the food away, he was already winding down, his face drawn with fatigue.

“Barely a six outta ten,” Reno said, standing over him with both hands tucked into his pockets. “You wanna give it another go, or you gonna admit you ain’t in no shape to be putin’ the fear of ol’ scale-face in anybody right now, least of all me.”

“Feathers, Reno,” Tseng said. “Leviathan is feathered.”

“That never made no sense to me. Lives in the ocean, don’t he?”

“Rules the ocean, not lives in it.” Tseng gave him a measured look. “Do you want to debate theology, or do you want to take me to bed?”

“You gonna stay in it this time?”

“Reno,” said Tseng wearily, “please.”

“Well shit.”

Tseng wasn’t much bigger than Reno on the whole, but he had muscle in places Reno would swear nobody else did, not even Rude. Rude’s strength was in his bulk, though, thick slabs of prime beef where shifting beneath Tseng’s skin were lean strips of muscle woven together like carbon fibre. They were both damn pretty to look at, but Reno never forgot just how damn much Rude weighed like he did with Tseng.

“I can walk,” Tseng said, nevertheless hooking his arm over Reno’s shoulder as Reno grunted and resettled his weight more securely. 

“S’more romantic.” Careful not to scrunch Tseng up too much in his arms, he slipped sideways through the bedroom door. The sheets were a tangled mess shoved to one side, trailing halfway to the floor. He set Tseng down, skinning off his undone slacks and rumpled sweater before leaning over to shake out a blanket. 

“I hope you don’t intend on playing at chastity as well as romance,” Tseng said lightly, as if his brow wasn’t creased and sweat-damp from that small amount of movement. 

“Hell nah,” Reno said, detouring briefly into the bathroom to scrub off the grease going fuzzy on his teeth. “I figure we got maybe ten minutes to get hot n’ heavy before you flake out and I gotta get Mr. Right to finish me off.” 

Tseng made it to fifteen out of spite. It wasn’t long enough for them to get much further than the long and lazy kisses Reno insisted on sharing, but he felt satisfied all the same. He knew where Reno kept his gun and backup pieces, and where every last one of the wicked little knives Reno favoured in close quarters were stashed. This was in addition to one e-mag hooked onto the bedpost and another second clipped into a failsafe holster mounted calf-high on the wall. 

There were perhaps one or two safer places in all of Midgar than Reno’s bed. Few were as familiar, and none came with the particular perks a properly motivated Reno could provide in the morning’s early hours. 

“Maintaining morale is a key responsibility,” Tseng said reasonably.

“Sure,” Reno groaned, his grip white-knuckled on the headboard’s iron rungs as he knelt above Tseng, his thighs shaking from the effort of holding back. Tseng reclined comfortably between his wide-spread knees and sucked lingeringly on his cock. “Whatever the fuck you say.”

* * *

“Ain’t got fuckin’ time for this,” Reno muttered under his breath as he sprinted through the Corkscrew’s access tunnels. Three lefts, a sharp right. Old train parts meant for recycling spilled across his path from a chewed-open crate. “Ain’t got fuckin’ time for this!” he hollered, and vaulted over the mess.

Straight through two more intersecting tunnels spat him out five feet from the guardhouse between the Broadway and Crosstown stations in Sector 8. It was empty, the door unlocked. He snatched up a handful of keys and darted around the side to the small lot. The second bike he checked, a compact speedster model, held a full charge. He dropped the rest of the keys, hauled the bike around, and gunned it. 

Until he saw the Tower with his own damn eyes, he wouldn’t believe it.

The Inner Ring Road looked the same as it always did, bumper to bumper traffic with the ventilation fans working overtime. Exhausted labourers and bored stupid office drones hardly looked twice at Reno skidding through a break in the concrete barriers to dart headlong through oncoming traffic. One middle-aged guy managed to get riled up enough to roll down his window and start cussing. 

The closer he got to HQ, the more anxious people started acting. Most were still in their cars, wide-eyed as they listened to the radio and exchanged uncomprehending stares with their neighbours. They eased carefully around a growing number of abandoned vehicles. 

The parking lot on B4 was locked down. Reno killed the engine and keyed open the gate. Tiny rocks popped loudly beneath the bike’s tires as he rolled it through.

Inside was dead quiet and dull, the lights switched over to emergency power. Stashing the bike, Reno bypassed the elevators, not willing to trust the bi-monthly reminders from the Health and Safety Team claiming they would operate just fine on backups even in a total power failure. 

He ran into a suit in the stairwell between floors five and six. “The fuck is everybody?”

“Evacuation tunnels,” she said. “I— I did a final sweep already. This floor is clear, sir.”

Reno stepped aside. “So get your ass gone.”

The echoing click-clack of her hurried steps filled the stairwell for a long time. 

More silence greeted Reno on ten. He didn’t run into so much as a post-it note until he keyed into their offices in the northwest corner where the smell of coffee and gun oil welcomed him home. 

When he accessed the surveillance feeds for seventy and got nothing, he switched to sixty-nine, sixty-eight, on down the line until he hit the atrium on fifty-eight. Shattered glass littered the floor, the deep-cushioned chairs. Evidence of the day-to-day—a folded newspaper, a coffee cup with lipstick on the rim, trash that hadn’t made it to the receptacle four feet away—lay scattered about.

None of it gave him any better of an idea where to start looking.

He kicked at the console. “Fuck!”

If he couldn’t use the feeds to search the upper floors, then he’d use them to see how far the elevators could take him and go from there. The auxiliaries seemed to be holding up just fine. He’d have to hope it stayed that way.

The thirty-seven second ride up to fifty-eight shaved three years off Reno’s life. He stepped out gladly into the buffeting wind and hunched into his jacket. Aside from the shattered windows and a few toppled plants, some stuff light enough to get caught up and shoved around by the wind, the place looked fine. No scorch marks, no bodies trampled in a panic, no blood. Nothing.

Maybe the blast had blown out the security feeds along with the windows.

The stairwell from fifty-eight to sixty-two was fully intact. The archives themselves on sixty-two were a little shook up, books and folders fallen to the floor, portfolios hanging skewed, a good chunk of shelves on the east side toppled. 

He didn’t smell smoke until he reached the back hall. When he pushed open the door to the stairwell this time, a cloud of dust poofed up into his face. Thick, dark smoke was pulled down to billow out around him as he wedged the door open with a squat pedestal that had lost its display case.

He made it up two and a half floors before a collapsed pillar forced him to turn around. The exit to the sixty-fourth floor was wedged shut. He thought about heading back through the archives to try the southeastern stairwell instead, but pushed open the door to sixty-three instead. 

Here he found blood.

Blood, and the sulfurous rotten fruit funk of stagnant mako. He snapped out his e-mag and sucked in air through gritted teeth.

The lights that weren’t busted and spitting sparks weren’t any more on the fritz than on the previous levels, but they were few and far between and the shadows, while steady, were deep. He didn’t look too closely at any of the dark chunky smears on the walls, and he gave anything with an eerie luminescent glow a wide berth. 

The labs were two floors up, starting on sixty-five. If the stuff from up there had made its way down to here, he should probably be thankful for whatever had blocked the door and kept him from sticking his neck out on sixty-four. 

His phone went off too loudly in the oppressive silence. He dropped down behind a mail cart wedged between the wall and a potted tree, digging frantically in his pocket.

“The fuck you want?” he hissed.

“Where are you?” Tseng countered.

“About to get my face ripped off by Hojo’s bullshit hobby, the hell you think I am?” 

“Get to the eastern corner of the atrium. Elena has a chopper in the air, she’ll pick you up.”

“No can do, bossman,” Reno said, straining to catch even the slightest hint that something pissed off and hungry might be headed his way. “I’ll catch her on the helipad when I find him.”

“Reno,” Tseng said heavily, “stop. The 70th is gone. The labs are buried in rubble and the entire thing could collapse in on the Tower at any time. If you’re in there, get out.”

Reno looked up at the dark and dripping ceiling, the mako seeping down the walls. It was too much to hope that everything in the Drum had died, but Rufus was still alive. He did anyway. 

“This is not the time to disobey me, Reno. I refuse to lose you in a pointless endeavour. Elena needs someone beyond merely competent at the controls if she’s to have any chance at all of finding the president in that mess.”

“Why didn’t you just fuckin’ say so,” Reno snapped, and turned his phone to silent before shoving it away. 

If Rufus had some way of shielding himself from the blast, it made sense to search from the top down. Pinned beneath a few thousand tons of concrete and steel was a more immediate threat than a murderous experiment roaming free.

Retracing his steps felt like it took twice as long. The backups started to fail as he crossed the archives. Muffled clunks of machinery shutting down echoed through the emptiness. Every now and then he felt a distant rumble as if the masses of unbalanced weight overhead decided he needed a nicely threatening reminder it was there. 

By the time he made it back to the atrium on fifty-eight, he was swinging wildly between hypervigilance and adrenal fatigue. He shook it off to switch out the pilot’s seat with Elena, circling the top of the ruined tower for a place to winch her down while she harnessed up. He didn’t think about the smoke and dust swirling in the wind, or the shattered concrete and jagged girders like broken bones. 

Neither of them said anything beyond what was necessary. If the winds stayed down, they had enough fuel for a little over two hours at a hover. Reno concentrated on keeping the bird steady and Elena’s tether from falling slack as she searched.

He had been primed for action. The lack of it was giving him the jitters, making it harder to concentrate than it should be. He would rather have been down there than up here, but Tseng was right. Elena was lighter, able to safely wriggle into places he wouldn’t. 

When she said, “I’ve got him,” his heart crashed into his ribs.

* * *

Rufus, his bones crushed and body battered black, lay still and silent as the surgeons worked. Reno watched yet another exhausted restore specialist be led gently from the room.

With no outlet for his snarling fury, he paced. He kicked at the wall, the chair where Tseng had told him twice to park his ass, when it peaked; muttered vicious curses under his breath as it ebbed. 

“Reno,” Tseng said, pointing at the floor beside him, “sit.”

Reno went down in a heap, his back propped against Tseng’s leg and his face in his hand. “Son of a bitch. I hate this shit.”

Tugging the tie from Reno’s hair, Tseng gathered up the long tail and draped it over his thigh. Reno had already ripped his goggles off and pitched them into a corner, but the marks dug into his forehead lingered. Tseng rubbed at them gently with his thumb. 

“S’nice and all,” Reno said, “but—”

“The president’s vitals are strong.” Tseng combed dusty, sweat-clumped hair back from Reno’s face, nails scratching lightly against his scalp. “I have no doubt his mind will remain so as well. Whatever else can be mended, if not now, then in time.”

Reno’s eyes closed, opened again only halfway. “He’s a stubborn fuck, ain’t he.”

“Yes,” Tseng said, pushing his fingers through Reno’s hair in a steady, soothing rhythm, pleased to see Reno’s restless fidgeting unconsciously slow to match. 

“We gotta move him. Fuckin’ rock is aimed right at the city.” Reno huffed, his weight settling heavier against Tseng. 

“The manor on the outskirts of Kalm is prepared.”

“That far enough?”

“Sephiroth means to first injure the planet, thereby gathering the lifestream into himself, so we have to assume Meteor won’t be immediately fatal to it. It’s been over two millennia since Jenova caused the Northern Crater and the planet has yet to heal, which leads me to believe that even if Sephiroth’s goal is possible, it will take time.”

“Bet your ass Midgar’s ground zero on purpose.”

Tseng hummed his agreement. For what Shinra had done, it deserved his vengeance. The people of Midgar, regardless of their compliance, did not. 

Sephiroth the man had known the difference. 

The war with Wutai had been vicious from the start. At the time, Tseng was unaware of how absolute the former president’s obsession with the Promised Land had been, and how deep its impact on his decisions.

Many had seen Wutai’s refusal to submit as a thorn in the side of the Shinra’s global conquest. So much pride for such a small country, and a government too entrenched in the old ways to see how its people could flourish in the future Shinra offered. Rejecting it was unfortunate. Regretful. But no cause for war.

Anti-Shinra sentiment became organised pushback became outright hostility, as the company treated all three as an attack on its people. Businessmen were accompanied by public safety officers as a precaution; the businessmen left, the troops didn’t.

Wutai, its honour abused, had been invaded without a single drop of bloodshed. The politics behind it were subtle and brilliant. War came when Shinra styled itself the victim. Whatever measure of truth to the claim—Tseng had seen too much to discount it entirely, and knew too well the cost of Wutain honour—SOLDIER had been loosed as executioner and judge. 

But Sephiroth ignored any who stepped aside as a non-combatant regardless of what aid they had given, or might give again. As Sephiroth did, so too did his brothers-in-arms.

“Boss?”

“I need you to help coordinate the evacuation efforts,” Tseng said, smoothing his hand over Reno’s hair one last time and letting it rest there. “Those who refuse to leave the city can take refuge beneath the plate, but do your best to remind them what poor protection that can be.”

Reno winced.

“Do what you can, as quickly as you can. We’re leaving as soon as the president is able.”

“Yeah,” said Reno, his head hanging heavily as Tseng deftly retied his hair. “World’s sure gone to shit, huh.”

Tseng looked again at the men and women who pieced the son of the man who had destroyed the planet back together. “Not yet.”

* * *

The first twisters appeared five days later, reaching out from Meteor like curious child’s fingers to knock over buildings, pick up cars like toys and carelessly let them fall again. What still stood of the Tower was the first to go. 

“Send three additional teams,” Rufus said, his voice a tired rasp. He drank lukewarm tea from the cup Tseng periodically refilled. “We may need the shelter sooner rather than later, and I won’t have a missed nest wreaking havoc.”

The manor’s matron, a tidy woman with a kind nature betraying her perpetual scowl, commanded an endless supply of teapots like a field general. She brought plain but hearty food with Rufus’s medicines, and traded hastily-written updates from the front for orders to be dispatched by chocobo runner.

Deserters were many, but those who remained loyal to the Shinra name still outnumbered them. Most realised the time for blame would come later.

“Three water filtration systems up,” Reno said, scanning the latest news from the mines to the south. “Rutger’s got a bead on a good size natural cavern off A-14, says they can get a tunnel dug and stabilized by oh-four-hundred hours.”

Rufus closed his eyes briefly. His face was pale and drawn, his skin puckered with scars. He wore a thick, oversized sweater with the hood pulled up to cover the jagged chunks cut out of his hair. “Any word from the Junon fleet?”

Hunched over a radio made unreliable by Meteor’s proximity, Elena shook her head. “Even with Central pushing it,” she said, referring to the temporary base thrown up half a mile from Midgar’s outskirts to provide evacuees with information and instructions, “only one in four agree to take a buggy to the shore. The ships are barely at forty percent capacity.”

“Pay them,” Rufus said. “Fifteen thousand gil for every head, no limit for families.”

Elena’s eyes widened. “Sir, are you—”

“Put it in their hands then and there if they insist. Everyone else can collect once they’ve settled on the Leviathan continent.”

Elena glanced at Tseng for confirmation, and they all pretended Rufus didn’t see. 

“The city units found another fifty squatters in the underground labs,” Rude said. “Half wouldn’t leave.”

“Leave them,” Tseng said over Rufus’s intake of breath. “Ensure they’re informed of the risks, and where to go should they wish.” He cast Rufus a sideways glance. “It’s their choice.”

“Fine,” said Rufus. “Fine. I can’t save everyone. Less mouths to feed later.”

Tseng stood as Matron Rita shouldered open the door. Rude cleared space for the large tray she carried, and Elena hung back until she bustled back out again with the half-empty teapot in one hand, water glasses in another. 

“Yes?” Rufus said after the door had closed again and only Reno remained.

Reno shrugged. “Just makin’ sure you don’t sneak in no more workin’ lunches. Gotta eat, gotta rest.”

“And I suppose you’ll ensure I rest well, is that it?”

Snagging a warm cookie off the tray, Reno slumped deep in his chair, arm tucked behind his head. “I gotta suck your dick to get you to lie down, sure.”

After Rufus ate as much as he could stomach—barely half the plate and most of it vegetables instead of the protein he badly needed—he was too exhausted to resist the lure of bed. Reno shucked shirt and pants to crawl in beside him, his skin clammy and cold where it wasn’t bandaged, his body already thinning as it turned healthy muscle to energy for rebuilding bones and flesh. 

He caught Reno’s wrist before it slipped beneath the waistband of the loose sweatpants he wore. Quilted blankets, a chocobo-down duvet and even Reno’s body heat pressed close wasn’t enough to banish the chill set in since Meteor blotted out the sun.

“Just relax, boss,” Reno said, lightly brushing Rufus’s half-hard but definitely interested cock with his fingertips. “I got you.”

Closing his eyes, Rufus offered a small smile. “You won’t complain if I fall asleep before returning the favour? A first.”

“Nah, I’ll go bitch at Tseng like always. He’ll pick up the slack, shut me up.”

Rufus sighed quietly and stretched, licking his lips wet as Reno couldn’t help but play. He tilted his face up and let Reno kiss him, spread his legs and let slick clever fingers bring him lazy pleasure for its own sake. His body ached at times like a broken and rotted tooth between carefully dolled out doses of painkillers, and though he knew enough to be grateful, his continued weakness rankled.

Work was a decent distraction. Reno was a better, less noble one.

* * *

Splayed out on top of the covers in a borrowed room, Reno took a swig from the bottle of cloudy hooch he had managed to liberate out from under the matron’s watchful gaze. Meteor’s cursed red light crept through the slats in the closed shutters. He closed his eyes against it and didn’t bother to open them again at the sound of the door unlatching.

Tseng’s stocking feet were quiet on the hardwood, silent on the rug. His shadow fell across Reno’s face as he settled onto the bed, his knees bracketing Reno’s hips and his weight heavy on Reno’s thighs. 

When he lifted the bottle from Reno’s grasp to drink, Reno smiled.

“That kinda night, eh, boss?”

“Very much so.”

They had a week, maybe ten days until touchdown. High-speed collision theories had been thrown out the window weeks ago when scientists discovered Meteor wasn’t gaining speed as it neared their atmosphere, but slowing down. Shinra’s twenty-four/seven meteor watch broadcast focused on the positives—more time to prepare for impact, less ripple effect, a higher chance for critical infrastructure to escape immediate crippling damage. 

Fewer initial casualties. 

“You wanna fuck, you’re on top,” Reno said, sliding his hands up Tseng’s widespread thighs. “I’m beat. I’ll still look nice and pretty for ya, though.”

Tseng’s laugh was a soft huff of breath. “How enticing you make it sound.”

Meteor hadn’t been summoned with the intent to crash into the planet at high speed, shattering its crust and sending it careening out of orbit into the black. Sephiroth meant for it to drill into the planet’s core with brute force and leave a great gaping wound in its wake. Like a well, it would fill with lifestream, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. 

“Brooding doesn’t become you,” Tseng said, leaning close with his hands braced on the crooked pillows. His hair slid forward over one shoulder to brush Reno’s throat. 

“Hey, I got dark ‘n poignant thoughts all the time.” 

“Oh?” Tseng eased back, the touch of his mouth to Reno’s a brief, tingling tease. “Would you like to share them with me?”

Reno didn’t worry about surviving Meteor. He didn’t worry about the fallout, or the planet pulling through but forever changed, or his own inevitable death. There were things a hell of a lot worse than living hand to mouth, dying young.

“I put out,” Reno warned, “you’re gonna sleep right here all night. No sneakin’ off.”

“When have I ever?” said Tseng, mildly affronted, and neither chose to dwell too deeply on chances missed to not be so alone.

* * *

“Fuck me,” Reno said, “lookit that.”

Three weeks after the combined havoc of Meteor, Holy, and the manifested lifestream had crushed Midgar into the ground like a bug, Rufus had insisted on seeing it. He stood on his own two feet to do it, though Reno shouldered most of his weight and kept a tight grip on his waist, holding him close enough to feel when the tremors of pushing his body too far signalled it was time to go. 

Costlouvre Ridge to the far west of the mines was the best vantage point without getting too close. Thousands of people had still been clustered in and around Midgar when it happened, but no one had any idea what to expect from being exposed to everything that happened that day. Until someone did, they were playing it safe. 

Reno had seen a lot of mako in his day, raw, stagnant, and otherwise. It was a thing of terrible beauty to see it move with intent, and he never wanted to see it again for as long as he lived. 

It wasn’t the devastation he stared at, though it was complete and humbling, but the faint wash of tender green visible in the distance. 

“So it’s true,” Rufus said, his voice the same flat void as Midgar’s shrinking wasteland. 

“Yeah,” said Reno, with nothing else to offer when Rufus didn’t mean the city’s ruin, “guess so.”

Rufus abruptly pulled free of Reno’s hold and sat down heavily right there on the ground. He dug splayed fingers into the cool earth, his palm pressed flat. 

“I need time,” he said. “If I shut them down too quickly, many more will die.”

Reno sank down on his haunches, balanced easily on the balls of his feet. “You’ll figure it out, boss.”

Rufus shook his head. “Not soon enough.”

Reno took hold of the back of Rufus’s neck, squeezing gently at the tension there and pulling him in until his head rested against the wrinkled lapel of Reno’s five days past filthy jacket. 

“I would like to know how much they knew,” Rufus said. “My father, Gast, Hojo…. Everyone. It doesn’t really matter and it wouldn’t change anything, of course. All of this would still be my responsibility.” He drew a short breath, released it on a long sigh. “But I would like to know.”

Reno had never known his parents, though he long suspected they weren’t much more than genetic donors at best, or at worst wishful thinking and he had sprung into being as a naked squalling child from Wall Market’s muck, and so he didn’t know much about the sins of fathers. 

He had plenty of his own.

He hooked an arm under Rufus to drag him upright. “Up ya go. Time to get outta here.”

Rufus didn’t look away from the life returning to the land beneath Midgar’s shadow. “And go where?

“Home, boss,” Reno said, pulling Rufus’s attention to the chopper, Kalm’s far-off, flickering firelight pushing determinedly against the coming dark, “home.”

* * *

End


End file.
